The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Due to the Internet and Web technologies, the number of network services has been growing rapidly. Most users, after discovering a network service (e.g., a translation service) with which they are satisfied, will return to that service whenever they have a need for that particular service. However, such a one-application-per-service model has become cumbersome for users as there are thousands of services available on the Internet. Keeping tracking of all the available network services is difficult for even experienced Web users.
Furthermore, if there are multiple network services that provide a similar service and a user desires to use one of them, then the user must individually examine each network service separately and remember (or record) all the features and options provided by each in order to compare the network services and determine which network service to use. Also, each network service provides its own user interface (UI), with which the user must become familiar.
Additionally, some network services require a client-side program, such as a driver or other third party software, to execute on a client device in order for a user to utilize the network services. Thus, a user might have to manually install, into the local operating system of the user's device, a driver or third party application program for each network service, assuming that a driver or third party application program is available for each network service.